EricWiberg

Thank you, Marc... that makes perfect sense. So SR 1 length at 164'6"(French units) is shorter than SR 1693 at 172' (French units).... in other words, exactly 8 feet in imperial units, or 24mm at the scale of 1/100. That is a big chunk of the "extra space" at the gun deck that I would have to fill. Also - my thinking on measuring spacing from the #1 chase port to #16 is WRONG, as the #1 chase port is placed ahead of #2 gun port by about 1.5x the spacing between the rest of the gun ports. So I will recalculate from #2 to #16, and then add in that extra long piece to the chase port. The spacing improves slightly.

As I wait for the paint (Tamiya putty) to dry, I have been doing some initial calculations on Lower Gun Deck spacing. My thinking is that I have a very good idea where the chase port (#1) should go, and where #16 (in the quarter gallery should go). I laid this out on the hull that I abandoned last week, and measured 501mm for a rough first measurement from leading edge to leading edge... so in between are fourteen gun ports and fifteen spaces between the gun ports. Winfield & Roberts says that Hubac used 32" wide gun ports on a spacing of 76".... in Heller kit size, that would mean gun ports 8.1mm wide, and spacing of 19.3mm in between ports. The problem is that 16x8.1 + 15*19.3 = 419mm... way short of the 501mm space that I actually have! OK... 32" wide gun ports seems very narrow for the handling of these big 36# guns? Using the formula of gun port width = 6.5* cannon ball diameter, the Lower Gun Deck openings should be 10.5mm on the kit (now, I do NOT know when that "rule of thumb" came into apparent use). BUT... if we make the gun port widths 10.5mm, then the space between gun ports need to be 22.5mm to fill out the entire 501mm from #1 to #16. Side bar note.. the ACTUAL kit spacing between gun ports is a whopping 35mm, and the gun port width is 10.0mm. The problem for me is that if I keep the gun port width at 8.1mm, then the spacing between gun ports must be 25mm to fill out all 501mm of space.... I suppose that while 25mm is a lot more than the 19.3mm it apparently should be, it still will look more accurate than the large, existing spacing of 35mm between gun ports? As a side note, I zoomed in on a VDV drawing of Royal Duc and looked at several lower deck gun ports as straight on as I could. It's not perfect, but the ratio between gun port spacing / gun port width is 2.1... while using Winfield & Roberts, the ratio (76/32) is 2.4.... that is fairly close. Winfield & Roberts state for SR on page 60 after "Dimensions & tons:" 164ft 6in. 142ft 0in..... I am sure they spell it out in the book somewhere, but is 164'6" the length from bow stem to stern post? Would 142'0" be the length of the keel? The Heller kit keel length is 483mm.... IF that 142'0" is actually the keel length, that scales down to 432mm. Is that the real issue, the kit length is artificially long by 50mm or so? Regardless, I think I have to end up choosing a gun port width/spacing that, while maybe not historically precise, it looks the best on the Heller kit?

Chapman, I do enjoy working in this medium of plastic. For a beginning modeler like me, it allows mistakes to be concealed, and also allows you attempt many different things, as I did on my first try at describing an SR 1671. The good news is that this second attempt should be much more straightforward, as the "experimenting " is done. If there is a better way to carve windows/gun ports in the hull than patient use of a #11 blade and needle files... I would love to know!

Now that I have a clear vision of what I want out of this THIRD iteration of my SR build; it's full speed ahead. Many thanks are due to Marc LaGuardia, as his knowledge and experience regarding all things Soleil Royal is only exceeded by his willingness to share that knowledge. I have decided to add a sixteenth gun port on the lower deck. The Heller kit has fourteen lower gun ports; on my first go-round with SR 1671, I added a chase port (unarmed), i.e a fifteenth port. Obviously, this also means that I will have to rearrange the gun ports on the decks above the lower deck, so I am starting down the path that CedricL pioneered for his La Reine build log I had already ground off the wales on the lower hull, so the next step was to plug the gun port holes in the lower and middle decks. I opted to use the kit gun port lids as Cedric did. Two years ago I tried adding gun port linings to the lids, and they were much too thick, as I learned to my chagrin. I pushed them aside two years ago... but found the bag this morning and was rather happy for the too thick Evergreen stock. Each gun port is now plugged to match the entire hull thickness, as opposed to just the thin gun port lid. It took very little time to plug all of the starboard gun ports. Prior to using Tamiya putty as a leveler, I added small squares of very thin Evergreen stock - 0.13mm in thickness. This just raised the profile of each gun port very slightly above the rest of the hull, as I wanted a very slight convex bump, as opposed to the possibility of a concave depression. I put on a surgical glove and smeared Tamiya putty on every gun port... I will let this dry overnight before further sanding. Finally, I used my Dremel to start lightly wasting away the unneeded decorations and mouldings on the kit bulwarks. I am using very little pressure, either from the Dremel or by hand sanding, as I learned that being too aggressive could generate enough heat to cause a slight warpage in the bulwarks. Very slight, but enough to affect the tenuous attachment rabbet where the bulwarks attach to the hull.

The wales on the port hull are almost sanded flush.... WAIT! didn't I already post this in May, 2024?? But this happened on Tuesday. I heard a "pop", and then the bulwark felt wobbly (starboard hull, where the front bulwark joins the hull in a several inch long area at the waist). I peeled off the planks and found this crack. The bulwark was always going to be the Achilles heel for this model. Many modelers report some difficulty in aligning the bulwarks - especially the front pieces - on the little bitty rabbet on the hull. And due to me sanding off the wales, I had a very thin area on the bottom of the bulwarks to glue to the hull. I used liberal amounts of Apoxie Sculpt, and glue tabs in areas where they couldn't be seen. THe joint seemed robust enough... until Tuesday. I tried several times to glue and Apoxie Sculpt the bulwark back in place, but the joint was clearly too tenous to risk... I could only imagine doing the rigging down the road when this would break again. Fortunately, I picked up a spare hull on Ebay last year, for all of $29.... I thought about it overnight, and then started sanding the wales yesterday morning. The good news is that I have all of my measurements, all of my jigs.. the work I did on the head and the new beakhead bulkhead will just slip into placde on this new hull. Honestly, I won't be doing any "experimenting" on this new hull.. I just have to follow the plan and measurements that got me to this point. Speaking of measurements... I would appreciate any advice/opinions on the following matter.. guns and gun carriages! You might recall I purchased a full set of cannons, and many gun carriages, from Kris/Skutznik in Poland. I first saw what Kris could do when he supplied the cannons/carriages for Nigel (NMBROOK) on his SR build at 1/48. Kris scaled the parts down for me to 1/96. In the next photo in the center, you can see a 12# cannon from Kris on the left facing off against a kit 12# cannon... to the left is a 6# cannon, and then a 4# cannon on the far left. In general, the cannons from Kris are a little beefier and more robust. I have a full set of cannon, but not of the carriages; I planned on using the kit carriages for the 36# and 24# cannon on the lower and middle gun decks (where the carriages won't be seen). Note how the carriages from Kris are lower in profile than the kit carriage (this lower profile seems visually correct to me); this places the center of the bore several millimeters lower on the Kris cannon compared to the kit cannon, which changes the height of all of the fo'c's'le, quarter deck, and poop deck gun ports. Not a big deal, I already have the measurements that I need for the gun ports, but.. does this seem accurate to everyone else, i.e. the carriages from Kris compared to the kit carriages (remember, these are the same parts that Nigel ordered several years ago for his build) Finally, I have a question on gun port spacing. Following the Rule Of The Cannon Ball Diameter, not a screenshot from my Excel spreadsheet that contains all of my measurements. Note the blue column is the predicted gun port measurements and spacing, while the green column is the kit spacing. The lower and middle gun deck spacimgs are close enough - calculated vs kit. But they start to diverge as we move up the deck to smaller cannon. For example, the 6# cannon on the fo'c's'le and quarter decks should be 22.2mm apart... whereas the kit spacing is 35mm. Now, SR 1671 - per Guy and his treatise - had 5 cannon on the quarterdeck... spacing them 22.2mm apart (instead of 35mm) would leave a lot of room, BUT... per Guy, SR 1671 was SUPPOSED to have 7 cannon on the quarterdeck, but two cannon were removed in the construction process to add one more 12# cannon on the upper gun deck. So on the quarterdeck, spacing seven cannon 35mm apart.. there wouldn't be enough room! There would be plenty of room at 22,2mm spacing. Also, the tiny "toy" 4# cannon on the poop deck would be spaced 19mm apart... I currently have them (correction - HAD) spaced 24mm, and that means I have to move the royal poop deck bulkhead, as Marc LaGuardia detailed in his blog. BUT... if the spacing is actually accurate at 19mm, all of a sudden there is a lot more room for two cannon on the poop deck and maybe the royal poop deck bulkhead has to be moved less than 10mm, and maybe not at all? Does this make sense to the far more experienced builders out there?

Marc.. thanks for bringing me back to reality, and there will be a swinging door in the QG!

Ian... just thinking - and talk about opening a can of worms! - theoretically at this stage, I could build out the lower hull. Meaning that I planned the upper half... I theoretically could bulk up the lower hull and plank it. That may sound crazy, but when compared to what I have done so far, it is not a stretch. The "but" is... where the heck would I get an idea of what a proper lower hull shape is for SR1671?! So it is much easier than to bury the hull and make a waterline display

Ian, thank you for the comments, and, when I display SR 1671 down the road, I am definitely thinking of a waterline display. When I changed the sweep of the wales I started with the lower most wale and lowered it several millimeters, so that the middle (and lowest) part of the wale would dipping into the water. Even with that, I think I still would set the hull into a base to make a "waterline display"... I have no idea yet if I would make a realistic wave panorama like Marc LaGuardia plans to do. I thought initially about sawing off the lower section like Marc did, but... twobyears ago that was way behind my skill set! Theoretically I could do it now, but... talk about opening a can of worms!

The planking is done on both starboard and port sides. I am starting the timberheads/cap railings on the port side, and install the cap railings on the starboard side. After that, there will be only some general cleanup left, prettying up gun port framing, making sure all of my holes are drilled, etc.. My goal was to get all of this work done before my surgery in eary January, as I really won't have a left arm for a few weeks! But that time period will allow me to to completely focus on my Quarter Gallery design. I am happy that I planked both sides with 4mm wide X 0.25mm thick strips; as I mentioned earlier, after I fabricated wales that sweep up at the stern circa 1671, I scribed in new plank lines to match the wales, and those lines were way too agressive. In addition, I covered up the Frankstein mess of tiny holes that I had drilled - and then redrilled! - as my scope has changed over the last eighteen months. I also carved out an access door to the "seat of ease" located on the middle gun deck level in the QG (thank you Marc LaGuardia for your thoughts on Quarter Gallery design!). I had difficulty finding period sketches that display such an access door, but my assumption is the door wouldn't need to be as wide as other doors on the ship, as this would strictly be a one man operation that a person could turn sideways though a 2 foot wide opening, and it would likely have a curtain hanging on the door, as opposed to a solid, swinging door (if I am wrong on that, it will be very easy to add a door).

Finally.. just the planking and timberheads to finish on the port side. My goal has been to get the hull halves ready for painting by early January, which is coincidentally when I am having surgery that will basically leave me with one hand for three weeks (no idea if I will even be able to work on SR during that period)! I should mention that I resized all of the upper deck gun ports on both hull halves, as they were too large. The lower and middle deck gun ports are spot on for the gun port size "rule", that the gun port width is 6.5X the diameter of the cannon ball that gun port cannon fired, and the height is 6X the diameter. For some unknown reason, I made the upper deck gun ports much too large. I did have one other.. detour... the last two weeks. Since I had to redo the upper gun deck gun port linings, I did some research on gun ports and gun port linings. I noticed this type of gun port lining on Andre Kudin's Fleuron (1729) build. I saw this type of lining on several other models, but it does seem the majority of models have a lining on all four sides of the gun port. I can't determine if the linings Kudin created on his Fleuron are period specific, or nation specific, for that matter. But I really liked the look and decided to incorporate his approach on my SR 1671. So, after scraping/sanding all of the kit linings on the 78 gun ports with lids, I installed the "Kudin linings". Now on to planking, and then the timberheads and railings.

Starboard planking is finished (note the one center area between the middles wales didn't require planking). Fairly straightfoward and easy, but there were a few finicky pieces that required some shaping by sanding. The planks cover a multitude of... mistakes/"learning experiences" that were incurred over the last two years as I changed direction on several occasions. I then made a thin wash of Tamiya putty and laquer thinner (almost like Elmer's white glue) that I brushed on all of the seams and little crevices... there are several larger gaps, usually between a plank and a wale, that I will have to fill with tiny strips of polystyrene. For example, directly below the brush. However, these will be very easy to fill in and correct. Then I used a 4mm wide block (to match the width of the planks) with 150 grit sandpaper adhere to it. This smoothed all of the seams and planks. This generated a lot of dust, so a bath with soap and warm water was needed. After drying, I willbegin to cut out the gun ports.

All of the starboard side timberheads are framed and I can start the addition of the railings and the dolphin hance pieces. I am happy, as I will have corrected a major flaw by now having my railings flow into each other as the aft decks rise up. Now, you may notice that the upper portions of the hull are now cloaked in white. It started because of this, believe it or not. A "honey do" project before the snow was to construct three cedar divider screens. As I was looking at the first finished screen, with inserts keeping the boards 1/2" apart, I had a thought. I simply stacked six boards horizontally without the inserts, and walked about 30 yards away. I turned and looked, and saw some semblance of a fine line between the boards, but if the stain and wood grain were similar, I couldn;t see the gap at all. Hmm.... I looked at my hull, and fixated on the deep scribe marks that I had made; as my wales swooped up, especially at the stern, I had to (re) scribe matching planks to follow the wales... and now those scribes looked like the Grand Canyon to me. I clearly had broken the cardinal rule of "scale".... and that bugged me. In addition, I had a crazy plank outline scribed in from over a year ago, before I realized that the number of planks between the wales was always a whole number, say 2 planks and not 1 1/2 planks. Grrr.... Well, what could I do about it? I grabbed a ruler and measured the gaps between the wales and the drift rails, and realized that somehow I had essentially spaced them on multiples of 4mm apart. And 4mm is the width of the Heller kit plank lines, as well as the plank lines I scribed in. Hmmmmmm. There would be no destruction required here.... and I looked at all of the various scars that I had inflicted on the hull... what would replanking the upper part of the rear bulwark harm? It was going to be covered with decorations anyway... and in about 20 minutes, after using 4mm wide planks by 0.25mm thick... I immediately liked the much tighter look of the plank seams... I won't even bother to scribe them, as in some areas you can see the plank seams, and some areas they practically disappear. So after about three hours of work since last night, I have essentially finished the upper three tiers. Again, no destruction, and easy enough to install the strips.. sometimes they require a very light sanding for a perfect fit. This is absolutely what I should have down in the first place after I sanded off the old wales and installed new ones. To create/scribe new plank lines, I first had to fill the old plank lines in with Tamiya putty, and then laboriously scribe in the new lines... and make some occasional gouges and scratches. Laying down new planks is so much faster, easier, and cleaner. Yes, I will have to go back and drill a bunch of holes for the gun port tackle, the gun port lid ropes, etc., but I have jigs made for those already. Now, I will have to trim out some gun port openings, but with 0.25mm thick stock, that is very fasy and clean. In fact it is easier to simply apply long strips and cover over the gun port openings instead of precisely trimming pieces to fit between the many gun ports. So I am going to plank down all of the way to the lowermost wale... below that is the water-line and the white stuff, so NO need to do the lower hull. So there it is - I am much happer with the appearance, and again... I should have done this right away!

Timberheads and cap railings are going well on the port side; I reached the point where I needed to figure out exactly how the dolphin hance pieces would fit. I had some initial sketches on vellum paper, and then I thought there might be an easier way. I took a photo of the area where the dolphin hance piece would sit. Then I made two prints of the photo, and simply cut out the dolphin body from one sheet, and that allowed me to move the paper dolphin and figure out exactly where it should go. Then I was able to get the French curves out and draw in the hance piece area.... Finally, I shrank the sketch down to the proper size, and cut out the rails, and laid them on the actual model hull to test the fit. The fit is spot on... now I can glue on the half-round drift rails that border the bottom of the timberheads and create the curved drift rail pieces that will sit under the dolphin. There is a support piece that I have sketched out on vellum paper; this piece will nestle into the concave curve in the railing and support the dolphin hance piece above it. One unattended benefit of ripping off the timberheads and railings and starting over; I will now have the various cap rails and drift rails blend together (see the red lines on a photo of the port side with the old timberhead pattern, and the differences in level!). I had no clue when I first did the timberheads that these various rails should seamlessly flow into each other. I was prepare to run these various drift rails all the way to the transom, which would have carved up the rear bulwarks into many small zones. Marc LaGuardia (Hubac's Historian) pointed out that in reality on the First Rank ships, the French did not extend the drift rails to the transom... as, in my words, that would ruin a large "bulletin board" where the various oranaments and decor would trumpet the glories of Louis 14 and the French State.

First post since I ripped off the starboard railings and timberheads three weeks ago (and the college soccer season has been very busy). I am about to wrap up the fo'c's'le timberheads and railings. The top rail is simply laid on... no glue yet. You can see the timberheads have some sanding dust on them. I should mention the nails. I have a huge surplus of tiny nails in three sizes; I used the largest nails (0.6mm diameter head) on the wales. I was browsing through Neko's Soleil Royal log, and I saw tiny nails on the railings/half-rounds (obviously they are on other wooden ship model builds as well)... and I decided that my railings would have "nails" as well, reasoning that they needed to be held in place just like the wales. The primary reason that I ripped everything off was that my timberhead spacing was incorrect; here is the port side and you can see timberheads magically above the circular gun port holes. Ugg. So this time around, I used the exact spacing of the Heller kit timberheads, and just clad them with framing, so that the timberhead spacing would be correct. Now, my timberheads are still 2.5mm in height with the railing on the timberheads being 2.5mm thick as well... but this time, instead of using 0.25mm stock to frame the timberheads, I used 0.5mm stock on the sides, and 0.75mm stock on the top and bottom. It seemed to me that this contributed a beefier look, a more solid look befitting a massive ship like SR 1671... at least in my vision (and the framing protrudes 0.5mm now, instead of 0.25mm on my first attempt). I used 2mm x 2mm stock for the body of the timberheads, and then laminated 2.5mm wide strips that were 0.5mm thick on the sides. After cutting the appropriate angle, I glued a .75mm thick piece on the bottom as the base. All of my timberheads were 6mm tall and spaced exactly 5mm apart (I made a space block). After sanding the heads down to 1.75mm, I just glued a 0.75mm square on the top, and the framing was done. I made four different framing sticks, so once I got in the rhythm, they just popped right out. Now down the rest of the starboard side..... and then the port side.

Well... I have made a slight change in my scope.... I went from this... To this, by ripping off all of my timberheads and railings and mouldings....why?!?! One reason was that I made the timberheads a year ago... and my skills have continued to improve. The other day, I noticed the glue smears and the framing of the timberheads, which weren't uniformly crisp and clean, and decided... I can do better. So the timberheads were ripped off like a Band-Aid. And that also allowed me me to look with a very critical eye at the various little imperfections that I had "let go" when I proceeded on with the timberheads last year... for example, plank lines, and other tiny items that now bugged me. Stripping away the timberheads allowed me to focus on the entire hull, which was now a blank canvas again. But... a primary reason is that I didn't anticipate the offerings that I would get from SKUTZNIK (Kris in Poland). I first saw what Kris and his team could do with the cannon they made for NMBROOK and his Soleil Royal, and ordered a full set of cannon from him... I am very happy with the cannon, and that opened my mind to other possibilities from Skutznik, possibilities that I didn't plan for as I didn't know the existed. 1) Gun port decorations... it will be so much easier if I carve inlets in the mouldings in advance, especially for the circular wreaths. 2) Gun tackle bolts/wedges... I have made jigs for the various gun port sizes to drill holes, so that I can insert the gun bolts after painting. I know that I have to make and use jigs whenever possible, so that I get uniform results. Note that a few of the prior holes (lower left bolt) are slightly too big, so I have to fill them in. 3) Dolphin ornaments for the upper gun deck ports... yup, I painstakingly carved two dolphin masters that I was happy with, and then cast 60 resin pieces. However, I was always bother by the thought.. "how will I glue each of 60 pieces into the same, precise position every time... without making a mess of glue smears and paint?". As I have said many times before, I need a jig whenever possible... so, could Kris make my dolphin pieces on a 3D resin printer and have mounting pegs moulded in? If Kris could do that, my results would be some much more precise and cleaner, needing just a dab of glue in each hole, then insert dolphin. Would that be possible?? Of course it was possible with Kris! 4) Royal poop deck/poop deck rail scrollwork... looking at the St. Phillipe monoograph, I envied the scroll work on the rail, whereas at that portion of the deck, I had a solid rail, in effect, a low wall. I don't know how yet, but I will create the scrollwork seen in the monograph. It may sound crazy, but stripping off the timberheads and railing has allowed me to "start over", and make use of my improved skills, but also the exceptional 3D resin work from Skutznik.